


when the water's dried you'll still find stone

by MaliciousVegetarian



Series: Geralt Whump Week 2020 [REUPLOAD] [4]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Implied Mpreg, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage, M/M, Trans Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Trans Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaliciousVegetarian/pseuds/MaliciousVegetarian
Summary: After the reveal of a long-held secret, Geralt shows up at Jaskier's door.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Lambert, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Geralt Whump Week 2020 [REUPLOAD] [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943452
Comments: 7
Kudos: 132





	when the water's dried you'll still find stone

**Author's Note:**

> Edit 9/28/2020 - This is a reupload of a previously posted fic. I deleted all my witcher fic during a Bad Brain Time, and am slowly replacing things.
> 
> Here's work four for Geralt Whump Week, for the theme Betrayal, just in under the deadline. Thanks to WingedQuill for looking this over, and for helping me develop this au and it's many many variants. Title is from Heart of Stone from Six the Musical, and series title from When The World's At Stake from Trail to Oregon, which I highly recommend listening to while reading if you want to have a lot of feelings.
> 
> Warnings: discussions of rape, mpreg, discussions of child abuse, discussions of underage sex, implied to be between a minor and an adult

Jaskier isn’t expecting Geralt for a few months, so when he shows up at his door, skinnier than the last time he saw him and soaking wet, he knows something’s wrong.

There are a few other obvious clues, namely the state of him and the expression on his face, which is thoroughly miserable. When he sees Jaskier, he pulls the corner of his mouth up in some approximation of a smile.

“Geralt!” Jaskier exclaims, already reaching for his friend. “You’re half frozen, come in.” Geralt doesn’t protest as he grabs his arm and drags him towards the small fire that had been burning all day.

Jaskier begins pulling the clothes, stiff with frost, off of his witcher, still meeting with no resistance. Geralt is still for the first few moments, then does his level best to help Jaskier remove everything in a timely fashion. None of the bard’s clothing would fit Geralt, but he has a thick robe he generally forgets to use in his dresser, and he pulls that out. It’s big enough that it should fit over the man’s unfairly large shoulder muscles.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and the bard snaps to attention, because Geralt sounds like he’s beginning to cry. “Jaskier, he hates me.”

“What?” Jaskier says, his mind trying to run through scenarios and failing. Geralt had been at Kaer Morhen, but the possibility of him talking about one of his fellow witchers seems ridiculous. Jaskier has seen firsthand how close the four of them are. “Who are you talking about?”

“Lambert.” The tears have started to fall now, and Geralt’s breathing is getting faster. “He’s - this whole time he’s been - and I never knew, I should have known, and Vesemir didn’t tell me, didn’t tell either of us, and now it’s too late and he hates me.”

Alright, there’s a lot here Jaskier isn’t getting. Geralt’s half formed sentences don’t string together into something coherent, but it’s obvious something happened, something that had roots in the past. Jaskier places a steadying hand on Geralt’s chest. “Breathe. You’ve got to breathe, alright?” Geralt nods, slightly hysterically. At first his breaths are giant gulps, but then they start to even out.

There’s silence for a while, and then Geralt begins again, calmer this time. Seemingly unconsciously, one hand moves to hover over his stomach.

“I had a child, when I was seventeen.”

Jaskier is taken aback, but tries not to show it. He knows that Geralt, like him, was not born with the parts most people would expect of a man, but he assumed the trials had sterilized him. He himself had found a spell for that purpose, when he had been at Oxenfurt and going through the rest of the magical changes he had desired.  
Then the pieces begin to fall into place. “The child was Lambert?” The world seems to have shifted slightly, in a strange way. This news isn’t his to be shocked by, it shouldn’t throw anything off axis, and yet it has a little bit. This will take some getting used to.

Geralt nods. Jaskier continues, confused. “I’ve heard Lambert talk about his family before. Several times, in fact.” Most of it had been angry asides, but one memorable time when they had both been drunk, Lambert had gone into more graphic detail.

Geralt shakes his head miserably. “They took him from me, when he was born. They gave him to that - that monster, to keep until he was old enough to be useful to them.”

“Oh,” Jaskier breathes out. “I’m so sorry, darling.”

Geralt pulls the blanket tighter around himself, and doesn’t take his eyes off of the fire. “He’s right to blame me,” he says quietly. “If I’d fought for him harder, if I’d gotten him out of there, he would never have had to go through that pain.”

Jaskier presses his face against Geralt’s shoulder, and the scratchy wool blanket. He’s low enough that he can hear Geralt’s steady heartbeat, and it’s reassuring.

“What happened?” He asks. “How did you find out?”

“Vesemir told me. I don’t know why, I guess he was tired of keeping it secret.” As he discusses his father, Geralt’s voice gets dry and bitter. Jaskier can’t blame him. “And then I made him tell Lambert. Who then made it perfectly clear he didn’t want anything to do with me. So I left.”

“In the middle of winter?” Jaskier has never tried to traverse the path to Kaer Morhen in the snow. There’s a reason for that.

“I had to. I couldn’t - I couldn’t bear to stand there with him hating me, looking at my own son and knowing how I’d failed him.”

His face falls even more. “I’m no better than my mother was.”

Jaskier reaches up to cup his face, rubbing his thumb against the stubble. “My love, you are nothing like her.”

“I abandoned him. I let him be taken.”

Jaskier sits back and looks at his partner for a long moment. “How old did you say you were when he was born?”

“Seventeen.”

Jaskier makes a small noise in the back of his throat. That raises more questions in his mind, but he’s going to wait to ask them for now. “That’s so young, love. You were a child yourself. And you couldn’t have stood up to the might of Kaer Morhen all by yourself. You didn’t abandon him, I promise.”

Geralt sounds choked when he answers. “I thought he’d died. For years, I thought my son had died in the sacking.”

Jaskier has a terrible mental image of Geralt, desperately searching through children’s bodies, trying to find one that resembled him. He wants to cry, he wants to ride to Kaer Morhen himself and hit Vesemir in the head with something and drag Lambert down the mountain by his ear and make him apologize.

Instead, he wraps his arms around Geralt, positioning them both lying down, and kisses him gently on the lips. His head is still spinning with how different the world seems now.

“You’re here now,” he whispers. “I know that’s not enough, but I’m here.”

-

Three years pass before Geralt sees Lambert again. He spends the winters in Oxenfurt with Jaskier, the university salary more than enough to support them. If Jaskier is honest, he loves it, even if it was for awful reasons. He likes cuddling in the old stone buildings of the college, reading together in the library. He loves having his students over, once a semester, and watching Geralt answer their eager questions.

Geralt seems to settle into it well. He reads even more than Jaskier himself does, lets him rant about poorly written essays, and holds him close at night. Every now and then he takes Roach for a long ride.

During the spring, summer, and fall, they go the same way as always, Geralt taking contracts while Jaskier plays at local inns and taverns. They keep to themselves, wrapped up in each other.

When Jaskier sees Lambert in the corner of a small inn, he freezes, straining his eyes to make sure of what he’s seeing. Geralt is still outside, settling Roach in the stable, and Jaskier has no idea if he should wait for him or go talk to Lambert. In the end, he waits by the door.

Geralt is smiling as he comes in, and he slings an arm around Jaskier as soon as he sees him. It’s a casual, loving gesture, so far from how he’d behaved when they’d first become intimate. Jaskier hates to ruin his good mood, but it’s pure luck that Geralt hasn’t looked around and seen him already.

He glances over again, and this time Lambert seems to catch his eye. His head jerks up with recognition. Shit. “Geralt,” Jaskier says quietly. “Lambert’s here.”

Geralt stills, not looking around, keeping his neck as stiff as he can. “I’ll leave.”

“You don’t have to -”

“Geralt?” Lambert’s voice is quieter than normal, but cuts through the sound of bar chatter. It’s a late summer night, and outside crickets are chirping in the dusk. The door is still open, and Jaskier can see Geralt considering flight and deciding against it.

Lambert looks strange as he gazes at Geralt, almost lost. A little kid looking for reassurance, the part of Jaskier’s brain that loves dramatic irony says. “You didn’t come back to Kaer Morhen.”

Geralt doesn’t say anything. He’s just taking Lambert in.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Lambert says, something scared in his eyes. “I understand, now, why you didn’t want me. And it’s fine, we’re fine now.”

Geralt’s eyes widen. “Lambert,” he says, “why wouldn’t I have wanted you?”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Jaskier says quickly, glancing around at the other patrons. “But let’s move this outside.”

Geralt nods, stepping through the doorway then glancing backwards at Lambert. The younger witcher follows. The light outside is fading, gone the golden color that happens in late summer. It casts thick shadows over Geralt and Lambert as they step into it.

Jaskier rarely feels out of place these days. He’s grown into the world around him, and he feels comfortable in almost any setting or conversation. But this doesn’t seem like something he should be here for. He begins to leave, but Geralt catches his eye. The look in his eyes says, stay.

So Jaskier does.

“You think I didn’t want you?” The pain in Geralt’s voice wouldn’t be noticeable to a stranger, but Jaskier can hear the rawness in it. He wonders if Lambert can as well. “Why?”

“Because - my other parent - they were -”

Jaskier is so caught up watching Lambert that he almost doesn’t see Geralt’s face fall. “Eskel told you?”

Jaskier knows what Geralt means, has heard the rest of the story in bits and pieces over the past few years, and he

“He didn’t mean to, but I kept prodding at him, wouldn’t leave it alone.”

“It’s alright,” Geralt says, his eyes not leaving Lambert’s face. He seems to be searching for something. “I don’t mind you knowing, but - you really think I didn’t want you? That I didn’t love you?”

Tears drip down Lambert’s face and onto the ground. “How could you have, when I was - when he raped you? When I’m me?”

Geralt shakes his head as he steps forward. “Hey. I never, ever blamed you for - for what he did, alright? It wasn’t - it wasn’t how I would have wanted it, but I wanted you. I loved you from the moment I knew there was a you to love.”

Lambert almost falls into Geralt’s arms. The older witcher curves one hand over the back of his head. “You were mine,” he whispers. “You are mine, always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm leavemecryingdandelion on tumblr, come say hi!


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